I have enough faith in self-serving market economies to believe that the oil companies are doing that which is currently feasible from technological and economic points of view. If there's money to be made from drilling that land, that land will be drilledMarket economy ... sell to the highest bidder. However, in an international emergency, we can keep our own, if needed.
(Jun 23, 2008 | post #118)

This is a national security issue.
It will be our oil.
Not Iraq's. Not Venezuela's. Not Saudi Arabia's.
We have the option of offering it in the global market. We also have the option of keeping it for our own use instead of depending on hostile nations to supply us.
Like it or not, oil (from petroleum or coal) is needed to fuel this economy until economically feasible alternate sources of energy are developed.
(Jun 23, 2008 | post #89)

Psychiatry is a field in evolution.
I worry this evolution has mixed financial motives too much into daily practice, changing self-expected norms in the process.
For example, where once psychiatrists actually spent time with patients ... even inordinate amounts ... they now expect to see 20-25 patients a day in assembly line fashion. Such a schedule generates the best income due to notably better reimbursements for short visits. However, short visits mean less understanding of each patient and less mindful diagnostic deliberation.
Additionally, ALL patients who see a psychiatrist are given a diagnosis. Why? ... Because they don't get paid by insurance companies without one.
Another influence, not unique to psychiatry, is the motive to prescribe to make expecting patients "happy." Paying patients are more likely to return when they get what they want. This dynamic is why "direct to consumer" drug company marketing works.
What about the big evil drug companies? In the big picture, I don't see their influence on day-to-day psychiatrist diagnostic decisions to be as important as the other variables above. Since physicians are the actual customers for drug companies, the companies are going to do what any business will do ... target their marketing. If a doc will prescribe more of Drug X because a cute drug rep brings free lunch for the office, an industry is going to oblige. In the end, though, the pharmaceutical industry can only go where docs are willing to allow them. Docs are responsible for policing their own behavior, and their efficacy here has been debatable.
A psychiatrist can unilaterally choose to mitigate the effects of pharmaceutical industry influence. A simple example ... "no drug reps allowed." By contrast, reimbursement rules as they relate to diagnosis and amount of time spent per patient, are not changeable by the physician, unless s/he goes to a cash-only practice.
Atop all of this, psychiatrists are trained ever more to be rapid prescription writers rather than psychotherapists. They are coming from the "factory " nowadays with one string on their collective guitars, played with vigor.
So, sorting psychiatric wheat from chaff is challenging.
From Goodwin and Guze's Psychiatric Diagnosis, 5th Edition (a publication concurrent with DSM-IV):
"Through the centuries, diseases have come and gone, some more useful than others, and there is no guarantee that our present “diseases” – medical or psychiatric – will represent the same clusters of symptoms and signs a hundred years from now that they do today. On the contrary, as more is learned, more useful clusters surely will emerge."
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So ... is ADHD one such cluster?
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More from "Psychiatric Diagnosis":
"We have added no new categories to the fifth edition of Psychiatric Diagnosis. In our view there are only about a dozen diagnostic entities in adult psychiatry that have been sufficiently studied to be useful. (For more on this heretical view, see the Preface to the First Edition.) DSM-III and its revisions introduced many new diagnostic terms."
***
ADHD was not one of the diagnoses yet endorsed as valid by this Washington University group.
Importantly, Goodwin and Guze represented a core of researchers who helped to turn psychiatric approach on its head from the old psychoanalytic days. People from their midwestern world comprised about a third of the DSM III task force in a move to shake up the usual order of business.
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So, what about ADHD? What is the actual phenomenologic validity?
(Jun 21, 2008 | post #10)

ADHD is one psychiatric diagnosis proven capable of sparking controversy and debate.
` At what point is an active kid so active s/he is ill?
` Is ADHD a figment of modern social pressures to perform and conform?
` Are kids being medicated instead of being parented?
` Whose idea was this diagnosis, anyway? Is it just a scheme for people to make money and shift responsibility?
(Jun 21, 2008 | post #1)

Once upon a time, I watched my wife argue with her daughter, then about 14 or 15, about a math problem. My wife punched the problem into a calculator repeatedly to demonstrate the right answer. My step-daughter disagreed, repeatedly ... saying the calculator must be wrong.
At that point I finally realized that I'd never be able to win an argument in my step-daughter's mind. I quit arguing with her. Things improved in some ways.
As my 88 yr. old father-in-law says:
"We grow old too soon and wise too late."
(His website: http://www.lindsey williams.org/)
(Jun 21, 2008 | post #381)

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Stepping back and looking at this, I think the most toxic part of this whole picture is the level of media attention being doted upon these girls. It's problem enough that this odd pact occurred. Personally, I don't think it should have been publicized. Consider, for example, the reason anonymity is given to juvenile offenders.
However, now other girls craving special recognition and identity know how to get it, too.
Like throwing water on a grease fire, the media, perhaps with some minuscule of good intention, only succeeds at making the problem worse. There are too many teens hungry for their Andy Warhol moment of fame.
The worsened problem itself becomes something to report ... special editions, magazine cover stories, etc. Blindly, media can create its own news, from which it profits. It then sleeps at night, comforted by its "championship " of the troubled souls it just created.
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(Jun 21, 2008 | post #290)